Matthew Ridgway’s Philosophy: Why Killing Your Old Self Creates Space for Growth and Leadership

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences So we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity My name is Anthony Codaspode and today’s guest is Matthew Ridgeway He is the culinary development director at pomegranate hospitality They are a New Orleans based restaurant group created by chef Alon Shaya known for concepts like Saba, Safta and Miss River

Pomegranate Hospitality focuses on fostering a people-first approach, emphasizing staff growth and culinary experience. Matthew joined the team in 2022 and has over two decades of experience leading award-winning kitchens across Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York, and New Orleans. He received formal culinary training from Johnson and Wales University, plus a hospitality management degree from Widener University.

Throughout his career, he has held roles ranging from chef to owner, including founding a charcuterie business, Pork Salt. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team,

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To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the Culinary Development Director of Pomegranate Hospitality, Matthew Ridgeway. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Matthew Ridgeway (02:09)
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:11)
So Matt, you’ve been in the restaurant business for more than three decades. What first drew you into this space?

Matthew Ridgeway (02:14)
Yeah.

Um, yeah, mean, saying, uh, three decades out loud, uh, really kind of ages me a little bit. And I can’t believe that I can say that, um, cause I was always the youngest person in a room and now I’m feel kind of the elder Statesman a little bit, uh, very different from today’s generation, but, um, still trying to be relevant, I guess. Um, I never really actually wanted to go into the restaurant business. wasn’t in the mid nineties.

restaurant, being a chef wasn’t cool. There was no, you know, the Food Network was in its first couple years, you know, it was reruns of Julia Childs and Frugal Gourmet and How to Bore Water. I always loved, you know, watching all of those. Discovery Channel at the time had, you know, the great chefs of the West, great chefs in New Orleans, great chefs of France. And I loved watching it. I grew up

you know, kind of crunchy organic ⁓ parents, you know, we had grew up on three acres. I learned how to can and preserve and we had a root cellar. had a lot of gardens. So I was always very akin to ⁓ cooking with my mom who was an excellent cook. My father was a terrible cook. ⁓ I used to call him the gray ghost. He, everything he cooked, he turned gray. And so it was not really the

Anthony Codispoti (03:36)
.

Ha ha ha.

Matthew Ridgeway (03:44)
I think a lot of I always joke and say that that is why I became a cook, but I just didn’t want to eat his cooking. But I think that I know in school in high school I did okay. And I wanted to go into criminal justice. And, you know, one of the things is that I want to do being the Marines and wasn’t so much for the Marines itself. I think it was more for the discipline, the organization.

I like a challenge, but my parents were much more level headed. This is before, right after golf war. So we’re really into good chance that’d be drafted to go overseas. And my parents like, you’re not going to the Marines. Which is a good idea for them, for me, is that I’ve never shot a gun before. I never owned a gun.

Anthony Codispoti (04:39)
For you, it wasn’t about going to war. was more about like, hey, I’m just looking to get some more life discipline.

Matthew Ridgeway (04:44)
Yeah, I think so. think that like, I like the challenge. I like the discipline of, of something of that nature. And so my brother, um, said to me, he’s like, why don’t you go into cooking? He’s like, you like to cook and you know, this is probably junior year. You like to cook you, you’re really good at it. And I was like, well, that’s not really a career and no one, no one goes into cooking for a career. Um, you know, at the time you read either on your like last rung.

or you go to Votek and then maybe you go into the, you know, I didn’t know there was restaurant schools or culinary schools. It just didn’t occur to me. So we went to go visit Johnson and Wales, the CIA, Widener University, and I really wanted to focus on cooking. And so when I went to Johnson and Wales, you know, you see the classrooms, you see how the uniforms are pressed and neat and everybody’s.

really kind of regimented. And I fell in love right away. It wasn’t just, you know, just the regimentation of it, but it was, you know, there was a lot of people that were passionate about the same thing I was. You know, there was no internet at the time. There was, you know, had random email access, but not really. AOL was still dial-up. So, you know, there wasn’t a connectivity. Yeah, nothing, no exposure. So,

Anthony Codispoti (06:05)
You just didn’t get exposure to a lot of the things that were out there at the time. Yeah.

Matthew Ridgeway (06:11)
And they had the biggest culinary library in the world. And I love to read them. ⁓ Johnson and Wales, Johnson and Wales. And at the time, ⁓ CIA dictated that you or me, okay. At the time, Johnson and Wales ⁓ didn’t require that you be in the industry for six months to a year.

Anthony Codispoti (06:16)
Sorry, they who? Which school are we talking about now? Johnson and Wales, okay.

Matthew Ridgeway (06:37)
where CIA did and I never really worked in the industry. worked at my cousin’s bakery. did some, opened, you know, I helped my brother-in-law at the TGI Fridays on City Line Avenue, which was a complete story in itself, ⁓ but never real kind of hard-nosed restaurant experience. So I decided that Johnson Wells would be the obvious ⁓ choice for me. ⁓

but we did go visit other schools. went to go Widener, went to IUP, we went to Florida International University, and it just seemed a great fit for me, Johnson and Wells. So, go ahead.

Anthony Codispoti (07:21)
And so

you were able to be around other people that had the same kind of passions that you did. And they also had, ⁓ I don’t know, it sounds like maybe the structure that you were looking for, something that you were kind of craving from the Marines. You got that same kind of structured organization here, but wrapped around something that you’ve been passionate about since you were a kid.

Matthew Ridgeway (07:36)
for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it was just a, you know, it was just a great experience being at Johnson and Wales. And then once I was there, I just kind of immersed myself into everything culinary. was able to read at the library incessantly. My drive to, to kind of be the best in the industry, or what I thought was the best in industry was really, you know, learning about

the French classic chefs, their apprenticeship program starting at like 13, 14 years old. And I felt I was so far behind everybody else that I had to work twice as hard and I wanted to go to Europe. was really, at the time you either went to France, New York, and maybe San Francisco. But if you wanted hard-nosed French training, you went to France or New York. And I really wanted to go overseas. And so,

I just spent my entire time ⁓ trying to get overseas, which was quite difficult because they didn’t really have an international program set up at the time. The French chefs were very reluctant to actually have an American go over and use their name to get in the kitchen. So was much, much different. And that wasn’t that long ago. mean, the 90s seemed a long time ago, I guess.

For you and me, it’s not that long. Yeah. ⁓ So that was really like the start of ⁓ my culinary training. And I was able to parlay that because I wanted to go to business school as well. So Johnson-Wales at the time was the only all-states accredited school that I could transfer credits to somewhere else. So another reason. Yep. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (09:09)
guys like our age it just seems like a blank right yeah

So you graduated summa cum laude from Johnson and Wales. Then

you went to Widener where you graduated cum laude. And then after you graduated from there, is that when you first sort of jumped into the pool?

Matthew Ridgeway (09:41)
Yes, right.

Yeah, you know, ⁓ I did. So while I was working, know, Johnson Wells, I was able to, they were on a trimester. So I was able to work a couple of days a week, but we would take trips. We’d have like a four day class session and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you would be off because it was still a working school. You know, that was the idea. So we would actually take trips.

starting like Friday and go down to New York City and eat at all these different restaurants, you know, and really experience the, you know, the kitchens that I really wanted to be into. And then when I graduated, I went to Widener and I wanted to work. There was only two restaurants in Philly that I really wanted to work at. One was the Fountain Room at the Four Seasons under Jean-Marie Lacroix and the other one was Le Bec Finn, George Perrier, ⁓ both neck and neck.

⁓ You hear lot about Georges Perrier at Le Bec Fin, I think mainly because it was an independent restaurant, ⁓ where the fountain room, both of us at, if you remember, Zagat, was the rating, you that was the gold standard for rating. were neck and neck, if not higher than ⁓ Le Bec Fin in all categories. It just was an interesting thing that we were in a hotel at the Four Seasons and Jean-Marie always said we were a restaurant.

that happened to have rooms above us. that was a, yeah, was a really, it was a really amazing and interesting time in my life because we really like, I got into the Four Seasons and I remember you could not get an interview. And you know, you, it was a line out the door. There was a line out the door at the Four Seasons, there’s a line at the door at Lebec Finn. And that was really, that was all you went to.

Anthony Codispoti (11:13)
Not the other way around.

Matthew Ridgeway (11:42)
And I was in class with a gentleman. and we started talking. He’s like, what do want to do? He’s like, well, I’m going to be an accountant. I’m already, know, I had been in the business for a while. I said, you know, I want to be a chef. And he’s like, well, that’s unusual. Cause going to business school at the time chefs didn’t go to business school. So Widener actually, we had visited widened university tangentially when I was looking for culinary, but they didn’t have a strong culinary program, but they had.

Anthony Codispoti (11:59)
⁓ okay.

Matthew Ridgeway (12:11)
the second best hospitality program in the country. And when I went back and I applied to Cornell and I got into Cornell, I got into FIU, I got into U of V, went to Widener, the Dean actually remembered myself and my father when we visited school. right away I’m like, he could have just looked it up. He could have had a secretary look up the file, but he took the time to remember my father, remember me, remember why I was going to

Johnson Wells, and that really kind of struck a tone with me as like, this is what actually hospitality is about. And I decided to go to Widener and they created a program for me. There was no program for culinary. You were either going to Aramark or you went into the country clubs or you worked for, and yeah, they just actually just created a program. They said, all right, well, you’re gonna go in as a freshman after two years, all your credits are gonna,

Anthony Codispoti (12:44)
Okay.

So they brought culinary and business together for you.

Matthew Ridgeway (13:11)
apply to any of the course study that you would need for your degree. And then by the end of your first year, I carried 21 credits, you just caught up and you’re now a junior, right? So ⁓ I was able to transfer all of my culinary credits and a lot of the ⁓ academic courses in, and then they just applied them to a lot of my core curriculum. And so I was able to ⁓ get through school in about three and a half years versus four.

Anthony Codispoti (13:33)
Nice.

Matthew Ridgeway (13:40)
just because of my advanced degree before. But it was a really an amazing time because it just didn’t, it never occurred to me why you wouldn’t go into business for culinary. I just never thought about it. Yeah, at the time you wanted to become the executive chef. There was no culinary director. There wasn’t a director of recipe management. It just didn’t happen. And so I was very fortunate.

Anthony Codispoti (13:55)
You had a different vision than most chefs at the time,

Matthew Ridgeway (14:10)
I was in a class with this accountant and I said, you know, I really want to get a job at the Four Seasons at LaVec Finn. And they said to me, he goes, well, my brother is the chef de cuisine at the Four Seasons for the AM kitchen. And I said, he goes, would you like to have an interview? And I said, yes. So I remember preparing for the interview and the day before, you know,

If you went to college, you know, you’re in a dorm, you get sick, everybody gets sick. And so I got really sick. had, know, pretty bad laryngitis. had a fever, but I’m like, I’m not missing this interview. And I went down and I interviewed with Jean-Marie and his voice is like, what you going to do, Matt? What you going to do? You know, that was his thing. It’s like, he tried to pull out of you and I could barely talk. like, I want to cook and…

And I think that he thought maybe I was making fun of him. And the next day I was hired, but I started in the cafeteria and I was like, Oh man, I really blew this interview. But I realized that that was it. And you know, you just have to push the door open. And I just realized it’s like, well, if I’m here and I want to get there, I’m not going to complain about it. I’m just going to do the work that someone else is doing. So I would go up and I’d ask.

Anthony Codispoti (15:13)
You had a foot in the door though, that’s the important thing.

Matthew Ridgeway (15:31)
questions and I’d start working and I’d, you you weren’t allowed to really touch anything on the PM line. It just was pretty taboo and I’d stand at the end of the line and I watched them cook. I’d never seen any of this product before, you know, even being a kid from bucks County, you know, growing up in agriculture, I’ve never seen, I never seen like lobster being cooked. I never saw, you know, I never seen steak like that. I’ve never seen filet like that. I’ve never seen anything like that.

Anthony Codispoti (15:56)
So you’re just in awe. You’re like a

sponge just wanting to soak it all up.

Matthew Ridgeway (16:00)
⁓

it was amazing. And so I just, over time, the chef, the cuisine, Martin Hammond noticed that I was just kind of coming up. I’d ask people, I’d pick parsley. do whatever it took to get on that line. And one day I got a call at one o’clock in the morning. It was from Dave Jansen, the AM chef. And he says, one of my cooks called out, can you work? I never worked on the line ever.

I didn’t sleep the rest of Yeah, and I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I came into work and I worked the hotline. It was a disaster. It was a disaster. It’s pretty famous as, at the time, we had three cooks on the line. wasn’t like in the lunchtime, it wasn’t a huge brigade. It was a three man line. It was two cooks, a Poisonnier and a Saucier and then the…

Anthony Codispoti (16:29)
This is like getting called up to the big leagues.

Matthew Ridgeway (16:57)
executive chef or the chef, the cuisine will come in and kind of X bite middle. So very lean. So you did your veg, you did your food, but you also did your own special. And of course I was like, I’m going to prove myself. And I did this very complicated special. and the legend has it that I got the most docile, ⁓ you know, Saucier who ran the line, absolutely just so angry at me that he’s like,

Anthony Codispoti (17:25)
What did you do?

Matthew Ridgeway (17:26)
I am going to kill you. And no one’s ever said that ever. Yeah, way too complicated. So like at the time, like because I’m an avid reader, there’s a chef named Charlie Trotter and he came out with these books that really kind of changed the game. And it was like, I didn’t realize that they had a brigade of like 20 kids in the kitchen cooking this. It’s like, you see this, you’re like, I can produce this. And you don’t know the history. You don’t know the why’s. You just think that like, you can do all these things because

Anthony Codispoti (17:29)
Because it was too complicated to make.

Matthew Ridgeway (17:56)
all right, you made a sauce once or twice in culinary school. It just didn’t work like that. it was a disaster. ⁓ And so it was a very big lesson to me in time management and organization and understanding that ⁓ there are certain things you can and can’t do while you’re ⁓ cooking on the line. And then from there, like I just saw we had a festival called The Book and the Cook in Philadelphia and

Jean-Marie would bring in like Grey Coons, Jean-Louis Paladin, Daniel Boulu, Jean-George, and they would come through our kitchens and Jean-Marie would start sending me up to their kitchens to work in their kitchens. I just, I was a little bit of a ham, a very disciplined, like, when, yeah, before,

Anthony Codispoti (18:48)
You’re cracking jokes. You’re making light of things. Yeah, you’re keeping the mood

light.

Matthew Ridgeway (18:53)
in the biggest pressure situation when your chef is like literally right next to you, I would still kind of, I perform, but I was able to perform under pressure pretty well, which really kind of helped me along the way. And, but he saw that and he’d say to me that, Matthew, you you need to, you need to be calm down there. You have to be calm up there. And I was like, I’m totally calm. And, and he’d be like, yeah, right. But he’d keep sending me up there and he keeps sending me up there. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (19:20)
So they saw something. Even after

this disaster your first time on the line, they didn’t throw you out to the curb.

Matthew Ridgeway (19:24)
⁓ and this was,

yeah, and you know, this was years, this was, know, you know, I was there for five, six years and I’d started pretty young because I was there while I was going to school. So I was carrying a full caseload and, and then I was still working full time. And so I really kind of tried to learn how to balance those too. So when I graduated, I went right into, you know, working.

in the restaurant and in banquets, which, you know, they moved me around a lot. And at first I thought it was, you know, I was like, well, I don’t want to be moved around a lot, but then it was the best thing for me. And then when I just start a hundred percent and, and I just, I was able to parlay that and, thanks to Jean-Marie and Martin Hammond and Dave Jansen, who had a lot of faith in me, I was.

Anthony Codispoti (20:05)
gave you exposure to different things, right? That’s what you’re saying, yeah.

Matthew Ridgeway (20:17)
you know, I would go up to the restaurants and then I’d come back and I would be the point person for the restaurants in New York. And I didn’t think there was anything weird about that, you know, and I never thought that was anything that was unusual, but apparently it was highly unusual that an American would be able to do that and, know, have the opportunity to do that at all. So that was, I really cut my teeth in the four seasons and the standards,

Anthony Codispoti (20:40)
Okay.

Matthew Ridgeway (20:47)
and the ability to ⁓ really, ⁓ Jean-Marie, we were changing the menu every day. We changed the menu every day. We would have a set menu ⁓ and old school menus, French menus were pretty big. And then we would have at least seven or eight, nine dishes on the menu that would change. And it would be written Monday through Wednesday, Wednesday through Thursday, and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So, and then,

In between there, if we found something new, if there’s something, you know, if Martin found, ⁓ he could get like a fish or something, he would put it on and then you make a whole new menu item. So it was a, there was a real testament to seeing so much food and learning how to cook from your heart and learning how to cook from your soul and less about recipes and more about tastes was really, ⁓

a very important segment, think, has lost a little bit. ⁓ It’s lost its step a little bit with restaurants now, but it was an important step because I understood food on a different level after leaving that place. The interesting thing that happened is where in thinking about it now with my culinary journey was there was a transition in the kitchen that looking back years later,

⁓ you know, when you got on the line, it was all hard nose restaurant cooks and chefs that really were, didn’t go to college, like learned by, you know, old school, ⁓ and came up the ranks. Yeah. But my class of cooks and coming up, we all had dual degrees. Some had degrees in premed. Some of them had, ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (22:31)
Just doing.

Matthew Ridgeway (22:44)
you know, some of them were pre-law degrees, some of them were biology degrees and they all came into cooking. And so that was a, I think at the time, a very scary thing for the chefs above us and cooks above us that here are these educated kids that are gonna take our job. So there was a lot of gatekeeping going on and you didn’t realize it at the time and what it was, a hundred percent. But I don’t think they did it intentionally. I think they were just scared.

Anthony Codispoti (22:58)
Mmm.

They were trying to hold you back.

Matthew Ridgeway (23:14)
of change. And that is something Jean-Marie was never scared of, you know, and he was, you know, he was up there and he never was scared of it, you know, and I think that really like rubbed off on me as well is that you can’t be afraid of the unknown and to move forward, you have to kind of like, you have to almost kill your old self to move forward. And that is really, to me, one of the things to take away that, you know,

speaking it out loud of why I think like with me with Jean-Marie was really, really our connection has been for years.

Anthony Codispoti (23:51)
That’s great. ⁓ We’re going to skip over some time periods here because I want to make sure that we give some voice to Pomegranate. You had multiple career stops along the way. Obviously, you learned a lot. Time management, all kinds of things about the business, the practical aspects, your time there at Four Seasons. You ran your own businesses for a little while. But how did the opportunity to join Pomegranate come about?

Matthew Ridgeway (23:55)
Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that, you know, I moved, I’m kind of a journeyman a little bit. You know, I really like to challenge myself. I like to ⁓ see new things. And so I moved, you know, from New York to Boston to ⁓ Philly to Spain, to France, to Atlanta. And I was in Atlanta for the second time and it was, you know, we had a house, we just had our daughter.

And everything was going well and then COVID hit. And right before COVID hit, had a trip planned to go to Bilbao in San Sebastian. And my wife, know, something happened where, you know, her sister couldn’t come to babysit as long as we needed her to. And so she said, well, where do you want to go on vacation or where do you want to go for a trip? And we rarely took trips. both in the restaurant industry. And I said, I don’t know. And she goes, what about New Orleans?

And was like, in 30 years, I’ve never been in New Orleans. Right? And it was almost one of those things in my mind. I built up so much, I was almost afraid of it. And I don’t know why I had no basis of that, but you know, watching Great Chefs and seeing Emeril, like back when he was on Great Chefs, not like essence Emeril and watching him at Commander’s Palace. And then there was Suzanne Spicer and Paul Perdom and

It was something that out of the complete different ⁓ genre that I was used to that classical French, like very like Asian and Italian and Spanish little kind of ⁓ genres for me. We went to New Orleans and we loved it. We fell in love with it. It was amazing. Pandemic hits. We worked through the pandemic. It’s like a girlfriend I never want to see again.

Anthony Codispoti (26:08)
Mm.

Matthew Ridgeway (26:13)
And we came out of the pandemic and I said, you know, why don’t, you know, we were looking to move from Atlanta and we’re looking either Montreal and she’s like, what about New Orleans? And I said, all right, you know, so I looked.

Anthony Codispoti (26:27)
Were you

really looking for like the French influence? Is that why Montreal versus New Orleans or just okay?

Matthew Ridgeway (26:31)
Not, yes, yeah, know,

yeah, a hundred percent. Like the food that in Montreal and New Orleans are, you know, what I thought I knew of New Orleans was, you know, very similar how I cook, right? And so JobOperative came up to work, open a restaurant or a hotel at the Hotel St. Vincent, which is a small boutique hotel run by MML in Austin. And I went down, it was right at Omicron. So,

extremely hard opening, opening a hotel during the tail end of the pandemic. ⁓ All the things, right? You know, in our industry happened at the same time. It was a confluence of like events. We had a massive hurricane. ⁓ So all these things kind of led me to, to a path of where it’s like, I left kind of independent restaurants and went back into a boutique hotel. And then I decided, know what? I really like the independent restaurants.

And it just so happened that ⁓ I saw a ad for the culinary development manager. And I was like, I have no idea what that is. But after reading, I was like, all right, I saw through the company. said, I like the values of the company. They don’t want to take on someone like an executive, corporate executive chef, because you take a risk in that, right? Is that if you’re.

vision gets kind of like sidelined by someone who wants to do their own thing. It could be detrimental to a small independent company. I took that role knowing that it was a role that was not lesser, but it was definitely ⁓ not where I was in my career. It was kind of a lateral down move, but I’ve done those before.

Anthony Codispoti (28:24)
And you did that because what you just saw bigger opportunity down the road.

Matthew Ridgeway (28:27)
I did, I

did, I saw a bigger opportunity. I really liked the lawn. I really liked pomegranate. I just wanted to do something where I was building something again. try to, it’s funny as I try to get away from it, knowing that like, I don’t want to build anything. It’s too much responsibility. I don’t want to be a leader anymore. And then just find myself going back. And so we’re strange bedfellows in trying to create something. And

I really enjoyed the time. And then, you know, I cooked for a long and we kind of like found out through my reading his cookbook that we worked at the same restaurant at the same time. And we didn’t know that because I had left three days prior to him starting. And so we crossed paths and it was only when I read his cookbook that I realized that that would happen. I went and so it’s kind of those things that happen to me all the time. It’s almost Kismet when I have

Anthony Codispoti (29:07)
Okay.

Matthew Ridgeway (29:25)
these kinds of things in life. And I’ve learned to kind of understand that and really kind of lean in. So after a year, they approached me and said, you know, we know that your skillset is much greater than this. Would you want to be the culinary director? said, yeah, sure. I’m already doing it. So why not? So.

Anthony Codispoti (29:44)
And what does that mean to be a culinary director of a multi-restaurant group?

Matthew Ridgeway (29:46)
So, yep.

So, you know, what happens that I, what I feel is like, you know, the corporate executive chef was kind of a limiting role. We’re a culinary director. I assist a lot with all things food, ⁓ direction, recipe development. I go through all the restaurants, whether it’s our strategic partners, our owners, our owned restaurants, and really make sure all of the standards are being upheld.

The food is what we had kind of like talked about. We write all the tech sheets, we write all the recipes. And we make sure that, ⁓ or I make sure that our teams are kind of co-lacing and driven to success on leadership style and really teaching the teams on management, on physical plant, ⁓ on ordering, receiving. So really kind of encompassing all of it where it’s just, ⁓

corporate executive shaft, you’re just kind of dealing with the food and you’re just kind of dealing with those kind of like just four wall operational things where I feel that like calling our director a little bit more strategic.

Anthony Codispoti (30:49)
Hmm.

And so as the culinary director, it’s not just food, it’s the people side of things too, which in most businesses is the most challenging aspect of the business.

Matthew Ridgeway (31:02)
100%.

100%, know, Martin Hammond said to me, said, you know, the food is the easy part. He said the people is the difficult part. And I really didn’t understand what he talked about at the time, but it really is, is that the people are one, are going to make or break your business. But also, you know, as a leader, I feel that I need to be, ⁓ you know, I wanna be a

To be a good leader, almost have to one, take on servant leadership. And two, you want to be able to teach them because selfishly it makes your job easier. And that’s a pretty basic one. But also it’s like our job is to train the next generation of chefs or cooks or leaders in our industry. if we don’t do that, there’s going to be a massive void. you hear it a lot. you hear it a lot now.

you know, the chefs or the cooks or the employees are not like they used to be. Well, whose fault is that? You know, whose fault is that? Did we spend too much time trying to rise to the top and not enough time building from the bottom? I think there’s a lot to do that.

Anthony Codispoti (32:23)
Hmm. So talk to me a little bit more about how you approach leadership, how you approach recruiting, hiring, retaining folks in a labor market that’s notoriously tight.

Matthew Ridgeway (32:35)
Yeah, it’s difficult. ⁓ The restaurant business literally changed overnight ⁓ from COVID. COVID changed everything you know about the restaurant business ⁓ from staffing ⁓ to food to how the guests are now reacting to food, how guests see their experience. And so you had to pivot during COVID.

Anthony Codispoti (32:40)
Talking about COVID.

Matthew Ridgeway (33:02)
but you’re constantly still pivoting. And those who don’t pivot will just go under. And we saw it in COVID. And that was a big one. And what I’ve always realized, and not like kind of like on the surface, but I always look to, a lot of times we will say, I find what I don’t want out of leader and I do the opposite. And what I found is that you have to take, ⁓

people who lead in stride because of their past experiences and kind of get the best out of what you need from that experience and then apply that to your future self. And, you know, what I mean is that, you know, coming up in the restaurant business for me was extremely hostile, just in general. It was, you know, yeah, yeah, you know, it just was…

Anthony Codispoti (33:57)
Hostel

Matthew Ridgeway (34:01)
It was a hard place to work. You know, it’s, it’s hot, it’s sharp. Everything wants everything, whatever way, ⁓ you know, the old school way was always the method. get yelled at a lot, you get things thrown at you. You get burned a lot on purpose. It was pretty brutal. There’s a point in time where you say, am I going to continue to be the, will you be the abuser or because you were abused, are you going to take that and kind of adapt your style to.

kind of break the mold a little bit. And I always felt that I was never been, I’m always super upbeat. I’m very full of energy. I’m always extremely passionate about what I do because I feel that like, if you’re gonna do something, you spend a lot of time doing it, you might as well just lean in all the way. And so I always felt that like being that servant leadership, which is kind of a…

not a new term, but like a term that like I couldn’t quantify years ago is that I wanted to help people grow because it was the only way that I felt that our industry was going to kind of manifest itself into a business that I would want to be in. And it wasn’t about, you know, I could take the pressure and the struggle and the strife and the hostility, but not everybody can. And so,

It was something that I really wanted to kind of show the beauty of our industry. And that’s a hard work to do. You know, it’s not about management by walking around. It’s not, you know, it’s not just kind of a disdain, but you have to like this generation for sure wants to know that they’re one doing this for a reason. And two, they want some of it’s a little, it’s not so much quid pro quo, but it is that

doing it for a reason, they want to get something out of it that’s other than monetary. And you have to figure that out. Yeah, I think a little bit of it. And there is a transactional ⁓ element involved, which I get because it was hard for me to fight tooth and nail to get my opportunities to go to Taiwan, to go to New York, to go to France. It wasn’t an open door for me.

Anthony Codispoti (35:55)
Like some kind of a greater purpose?

Matthew Ridgeway (36:19)
What I try to do is open the door for everyone. It’s up to them to walk through, but I’m going to make that pathway a little bit easier. And at the time I let them fail, but I’m there to catch them. And I feel that that’s important as well. ⁓ With retention, retention is a big thing in this industry because our churn is pretty high.

⁓ tend to hold on to a lot of people for a long time, both Saba, Safta, our restaurants that we own. And the reason is, is one of the core values, one of the core values that I enjoy is education. And this is where it comes back to, know, the chefs that are in my trust are, I feel a, you know, a kinship to them to make sure that they get the education that I got, but a little bit

you know, make sure that door is open a little bit more. Yeah, exactly. But you have to like, I think that you have to couple it with not, you’re not coddling anybody and you’re not giving someone the free ride. You’re making sure that they’re responsible for all their actions and them understanding that every action they make, there’s a reciprocal action that follows.

Anthony Codispoti (37:15)
without having stuff thrown at you.

So talk to me about the different concepts. You’ve got, in my count, five restaurants and two bars in the portfolio. Is there kind of a common thread that links them all together?

Matthew Ridgeway (37:43)
Yep.

Yeah, well, it’s a lawn, right? It’s a lawn Shaya is the archetype for all the restaurants. He had worked with John Besh in capacity of like opening a place called San Domenica. He opened up a Shaya restaurant, then he broke off and started Saba. And then from Saba, he had Safta. And then from Safta, since pomegranate is kind of the management arm of our collection of restaurants,

We had the opportunity to open up the Chandelier Bar, Miss River. ⁓ We did a pop-up residency ⁓ in Vegas. We have Salon in the Bahamas. ⁓ We’re opening up a restaurant, a bar called Ceci within Safta. ⁓ And so, we’re in a hotel, but we’re not part of the hotel.

Anthony Codispoti (38:37)
A restaurant within a restaurant?

Matthew Ridgeway (38:42)
And so it opens up to what they have as kind of like a common area. And that common area extends part of our restaurant outward and then right across the way we build out a bar called Ceci it was, ⁓ you know, these opportunities come along and we kind of take them with both hands. Cause the idea is to not only ⁓ you kind of get in partnerships with management deals to be able to fund your own restaurant.

right? I think that’s really kind of like a unique way of vision of going about it. so Alon’s story is being told through Saba, Safta, Miss River, ⁓ Ceci And my job, ⁓ which I take on willingly and I enjoy, ⁓ is to make sure that story is true to the vision.

Anthony Codispoti (39:37)
What does that mean? What are some practical things that you do to make sure that you’re executing it the way that Alon intends?

Matthew Ridgeway (39:43)
Yep,

on the technical side, on the four walls side, what I found is that there is a massive gap between what I’ve learned and what the newer generation were able to learn. So ⁓ on the four walls, teaching them about HVAC, teaching them about physical plant, ⁓ all the things that take operational wise that I know how to run a restaurant. The labor, the food costs, people management skills. ⁓

And we have a very specific way of, ⁓ with Pomegranate, of making sure people are, one, heard within the space of our company, but have value and respected, right? And that’s in the restaurant industry. It’s a very, I can speak to the restaurant industry alone. Other industries are tough for me, so I can’t say for any confidence. But ⁓ in the restaurant industry, you did not have

a lot of like respect, there was a lot of gatekeeping. ⁓ And we really kind of, we make that our mission not to make that happen, right? And what I say all the time to our, you know, our younger leaders, I said, that’s not just like words on the wall or on paper. You have to work at it every day and it’s not perfect. And you’re gonna struggle with those people issues and those struggle with, you know, various degrees of like, you know, racial, religious,

⁓ ethnicity backgrounds, but you always have to like keep in mind that everybody brings value and our job is to bring the most value out of those people. in the end, that’s what people want. They want value to their job. You know, it’s not just sometimes always a paycheck. So I really take that seriously. I feel education is one of the most important parts of our core values that we’re able to

kind of parlay that out into our leadership. And ⁓ that’s really an important ⁓ aspect for what we do at Pomegranate.

Anthony Codispoti (41:50)
Where do you guys see Pomegranate going in the next few years? Are there new concepts planned? Are you thinking about replicating some of the existing concepts into additional locations?

Matthew Ridgeway (42:02)
Yeah, so we are in the middle of doing a new concept called Softest Table in almost the suburbs of New Orleans. New Orleans, I don’t know if you’ve been here, it’s pretty small. So Orleans Parish is kind of small. That is what New Orleans is. And then as it goes outwards, have Jefferson Parish and Metairie and Lakeside. And so we’re opening up in kind of the suburbs, but the suburbs are not like

it’s not like a far jump from New Orleans to the suburbs. So we’re having softest table, is ⁓ kind of a fast casual concept that we hope to kind of repeat. I feel like our ⁓ lean in of the food and Alon’s story of ⁓ Israeli Mediterranean is a really good ⁓ solid way to, we wanna keep low below the quality high.

and make it a little bit repeatable. And I think that’s important to be diversified into different concepts. We’re always looking on the pomegranate arm for new partnerships. That’s part of our business is consultancy, but we’re pretty slow with our growth on that end. We do take on some, like I said, the pop-up role in Vegas saying that’s something that Alon really felt strongly about. He cut his teeth in Vegas and he wanted to

kind of have a short-term residency at the Wynn Hotel. And with each new partnership that we have, we really do our best to be good stewards of their place. We come up strategically with ⁓ vision and recipes, recipe development, a lot of them, and then…

we maintain and make sure that those recipes and vision is consistent on all the brand side. But in the end, a lot of the, are, ⁓ our partners are the operators. And so it’s more of a consultancy, but we, know, each one we take very personally to make sure that our story is told. And I would feel that like an overarching like theme for all of this is like storytelling is really one of the most important things.

that we try to imbibe a spirit of storytelling with each one of our restaurants. So our growth is slow, but then it’s like, hurry up on the growth. Because it’s like that combination of restaurant business is that you have slow growth and then all of a sudden you’re shot out of a cannon and you have like three projects going on at the same time. you’re like, how are we going to ever achieve this?

Anthony Codispoti (44:50)
So let me see if I understand that. It’s slow from the perspective of you guys aren’t rushing into bad opportunities. You’re taking your time to identify the right places, the right concepts, or the right partnerships. And then once you find them and there’s an agreement on both sides, then everybody wants to move really fast. Because you’ve got this connection, you feel like you’ve got a powerful concept, and you want to move quickly with it.

Matthew Ridgeway (45:09)
Yes, that’s correct.

Yeah,

absolutely. And then on our growth side for the company as well is that we really take our time to on ⁓ our four walls growth with ownership to make sure that we’re stable enough to grow the business without creating a vacuum between our other restaurants. And when I say vacuum, well, not only that, it’s less about that and more about when you…

Anthony Codispoti (45:35)
What do mean creating a vacuum, like sucking customers away?

Matthew Ridgeway (45:43)
open a restaurant, inevitably infuse the restaurant, your parent restaurant ⁓ with your value, your core values, your leadership skills. You’re going to inevitably pull somebody out of that restaurant and that’s going to create a void. So when you open a restaurant, you’re pulling people out. One of my jobs too is create bench strength. And our job too is creating bench strength to make sure that there is a good backfill of great leaders.

in the restaurants to make sure that if we do open another concept, we’re not bleeding any of the restaurants dry.

Anthony Codispoti (46:21)
Got it. And the partnerships that you’re describing, I wanna see if I understand this. Oftentimes, it’s not like you’re staffing it. It’s like you’re coming in and they’ve kinda got a partial vision. You’re helping them complete that vision and then telling them, hey, here’s the best way to sort of pull this off. Let us give you suggestions on the menu, suggestions on, I don’t know, how to organize your staff. Am I hitting kind of the right notes here?

Matthew Ridgeway (46:30)
Correct.

Yeah, yeah, for

sure. ⁓ I’ll give you a direct example, Miss River at the Four Seasons. You we don’t own the bricks of the Four Seasons. ⁓ We have Miss River and ⁓ we are not the operators of doing the day-to-day operations. What we do is write the menus, overall concept and vision of Grand, Neural, and Sal Louisiana cuisine, make sure that, you know,

The recipes are ours. Make sure the recipes are followed. We do give suggestions with like staffing levels and organization of the kitchen and how things are going to operate. But in the end, they’re the operators. So they can take our ⁓ directives as suggestions because they are the four walls they operate. But a lot of our direction too is tied to profitability as well as that.

You know, we don’t want to be a restaurant just a showcase with no profit. We want to make sure that to be good stewards of a, ⁓ like the Four Seasons and within the Four Seasons, we want to be, make sure that they are profitable as well and that we can continue on a good relationship. And I find a lot of times when businesses are partnerships in the restaurant, where I’ll go sour, is people are not talking to each other. And there’s no eye on the ball of like,

Let’s make sure we’re profitable, but we’re also making sure that vision is seen through 100%. And that’s where we come in.

Anthony Codispoti (48:23)
So among the five restaurants and the two bars that are under your umbrella are all of these the partnerships that you’re describing or are you the operator in any of them?

Matthew Ridgeway (48:35)
Nope, operate Saba, Safta, Safta’s table. ⁓ And then we are ⁓ going to be, ⁓ we’re gonna operate or we’re operating Chechi, which is the bar at Safta. ⁓ We will staff it as well as vision. ⁓ And we’ll allocate, there’s an allocation of funds to make sure that in the end, like, yes, they could.

because the source hotel that has Softa could say, tomorrow you no longer operators, but they see the value in having Softa, which is their anchor restaurant. We are not under the source, the source is the hotel company that operates, but we’re an anchor store for them. And so they see that there’s value in that. ⁓ Whereas with the Miss River, the Four Seasons, the operating agreement,

is ⁓ something that we do have like, you if a new chef cuisine comes in, we do have like final say if that chef cuisine is going to be in charge of the restaurant. ⁓ We are not going to be charged a payroll or taxes or, you know, any of the nitty gritty with budgeting, but we do have a good hand in like making sure that we’re constantly staying on the cusp of the restaurant.

⁓ world, we’re making sure our story is correct and accurate.

Anthony Codispoti (50:06)
Got it. Matt, I’ve just got one more question for you today, but before I ask it, I want to do a few things. First of all, anyone who wants to get in touch with Matthew Ridgeway from Pomegranate, his personal email address is sauteme1 at gmail.com, and we’ll have that in the show notes. Also, as a reminder, if you want to get more employees access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com.

Matthew Ridgeway (50:10)
Yep. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (50:34)
Finally, if it’ll take just a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, you will hold a special place in my heart forever. Thank you. So last question for you, Matt. I would like to explore a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, whether it’s something personal or professional, how you got through it and what you learned.

Matthew Ridgeway (50:54)
Okay. Yeah, I I thought about this, you know, going back and forth, like, COVID was, you know, personally and professionally challenging, but I would have to say like, turning point wise, 2007 was one of the most challenging years of my life, for a number of reasons is that it was really when I started to reevaluate who I am as a person.

professionally and personally, and where I was gonna go with my career, I’ve always considered ⁓ myself more of a vocation and less of a job. And that really always rang true, but when you’re in pursuit of a journeyman vocation, you tend to leave what I call a lot of dead bodies on the floor. ⁓ And in business, you’ll say like,

there’s trade-offs, right? Is that if you’re going to go create your own business, there are trade-offs as you you have to be a little bit quote unquote selfish of like, maybe it’s less family time. Maybe it’s less, you know, in pursuit of something. Maybe you have to like, ⁓ get something in your restaurant or your business to grow. You’re gonna trade something off, whether it’s personally or professionally or monetarily and

you have to be okay with that. And when I say leave a lot of bodies on the floor is that, you know, in my quest to kind of climb the rung of culinary in the restaurant business, tend to, your relationships and your personal life is basically very intertwined in your business. You’re not, don’t own restaurants when you’re working in them, but you feel very kinship to ownership, right? And

you know, with girlfriends or significant others or boyfriends or family, you sacrifice all that, you know, you, you spend no vacation time. And so you’d spend really no personal time and any personal time you have, you dedicate to your craft. And that is, you know, had wreaked havoc on my life and my personal life for a long time. I didn’t really realize it though, you know, because it was like,

people just don’t understand me. They don’t understand the vocation. They don’t understand where I’m going. They don’t understand where I’m being number one. And I didn’t, I never really took a step back and like understood that to a certain extent. So 2007, I was in Atlanta ⁓ with my significant other and I thought we decided to go to New York and it basically, I decided to go to New York ⁓ and I went up and you know,

It so happened when we opened up the Oak Room in New York, it was kind of a disaster. Everything went wrong to being over budget, to not really understanding. And this is where I learned a lot about business of, you know, with a chef owner, I was working with Joelle, the chef owner of, you know, the relationship to the owner and the financier of the restaurant and his relationship, but, know, kind of fell apart and, you know, I’m 20 years old.

and trying to manage that as well as your relationship is falling apart. ⁓ And it almost became like a ⁓ country Western song for me. My dog died, my girlfriend left me, I lost my job, but then the economy crashed. It’s like I lost my job, economy crashed. No one wanted high-end food. And my dad got very sick ⁓ and I was in New York and

you know, I went home to like, just kind of took a stop and I, you know, I did not know what to do with the rest of my life. It was kind of like, I hit all the markers I wanted to hit very quickly. And it’s that kind of like half-life realization of like, I have no plan behind, besides like being a chef. There was no thought of having children. There was no thought of buying a house or it was, all right, I could.

go sleep on my friend’s couch and start up again and go back into being a chef of like a high-end restaurant. ⁓ And I decided that I didn’t want to do that anymore. And I walked away from culinary. ⁓ I went home, took care of my father and I was basically penniless and lived at home at like 30 years old. And when I got the job, I actually swept floors for

um, a, uh, a fish company and then did deliveries for them. And as I was doing deliveries for them, you know, chefs and, you know, where I was delivering deliveries for were cooks in my kitchen. And they’re like, what are you doing? And I’m like, I don’t want anything to do with the industry anymore. don’t like it. It burned like a hole in my soul that I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. And I just, you know, the charcuterie thing.

I was always kind of ahead of the game with a lot of stuff. And again, you don’t think you’re going to innovate. It’s just not even a thought. I knew charcuterie because we did it all the time in French restaurants. I knew how to butcher because I knew how to do French. I was in French restaurants and that was, you know, always a job. I didn’t really think that was going to be like parlay into something bigger than it was. And so as I’m sweeping the, you know,

the floor and doing deliveries, they also started a line of charcuterie. were kind of doing like a value added. And I saw what they were doing at this company. And I’m like, that is just not good, but that’s not my place. I’m not, I’m not getting into it. had my kind of self-talk. I’m not going to do this. This is not where I want to be. I don’t know what I’m going to do. And the next thing is like, I was like, I have to tell them that this is not good. And.

I was like, I went to the owner. was like, this isn’t very good. ⁓ I can make it for you. It’s pretty simple. So I started making things and I started with duck confit. And then I started with block de foie gras, which is like train that I did a duck prosciutto. And then I started baking and all of a sudden we, you know, we saw this like on a wholesale level kind of retail level that there is real need for it.

And again, still not looking at that. just knew how to do it. It’s relatively easy for me. And I didn’t, it wasn’t that I was as invested emotionally in it. And so what I did was I was like, I can work alone. I don’t have anybody to answer to. No one answers to me. And I’m just going to do some, you know, I’m going to do some charcuterie and I’m going to go to a farmer’s market.

And then I realized that there was no like supply chain for chefs direct market to like pigs and ducks and chickens directly from farmers to a lot of the chefs. I created like kind of a co-op from Lancaster farms to kind of like help farmers give them a better ⁓ check rather than getting through third party. I picked the things up. I’d make something value added at it.

I would sell it to either restaurants or sell it to farmers markets as a retail arm. And it just kind of grew. mean, I just remember I was like, I don’t want to be the bacon guy, but you know, realizing that now I should have been the bacon guy. And it was, you know, I went, I made, you know, at the time there was no significant market in 2007, 2008 for like very boutique. Bacon’s.

or boutique charcuterie just didn’t really exist. And so I created a red wine bacon. created a honey cured bacon. My dad’s a beekeeper. So I got the honey from him. I created a cherry wood bacon and it was just all new for people. mean, people call it charcuterie. They didn’t know what charcuterie was. For pronunciations, they’re like, why am I buying this from you at $7 a pound when I can buy it at the store for $2 a pound. And it was, it was, you know, an educational piece. then

the restaurant came along again, did not want to get into the restaurant business. I felt there was, needed an outlet. And so I kept it very small, lean and mean. There’s three of us in the kitchen. We changed the menu every day for two years. It was an old farmhouse that I rehabbed. And I just decided that that was kind of my outlet for kind of really mending my soul a little bit. And at the same time as it happened,

is that I decided like, so I had connected with my first girlfriend in elementary school and we hadn’t seen each other since eighth grade. And for whatever reason she was in town or she lived in town, she’s still around. And she said, you know, why don’t we go get a drink? And ⁓ well, she says that I didn’t say that I stalked her on Facebook, but that’s not true. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:34)
You

Matthew Ridgeway (1:00:36)
And so we ended up going out and, you know, in your head, when you see, haven’t seen someone from eighth grade all this time, you just have a vision in your head that it’s going to be a, the same person, just taller with pigtails and braces, right? And this beautiful knockout woman walked through the door and I couldn’t believe it. She was the same person. And that night I got home.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:55)
Frozen in time.

Matthew Ridgeway (1:01:06)
I was talking to my mother and she’s like, how was your date with Elizabeth? And I said, good, it wasn’t a date, mom. And she said to me, she looked at me square in the face and you know, I’m 30 at this point. She goes, if you’re not sure about this, you need to tell her. Don’t fuck this up, she’s a nice person. And that stuck with me because that night I went to bed and I said, you know, I can continue to do the same things I was doing and not realize that.

the impact that I have on people and family and myself and wondering why things continuously go wrong and I’m not able to move to the next rung or I can somehow understand that personally will help me professionally as well. And that was probably like kind of a turning point for me is that, you know, I really opened up to her. I brought her into my life.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:53)
you

Matthew Ridgeway (1:02:03)
She brought herself into my life and vice versa. And we really grew a kinship to where we really like, we got married later, I know in 37. So I married my first girlfriend from elementary school at 37 years old. We had a daughter at 40, so late father, but all those things, it wasn’t a hindrance. I was wrong. ⁓ It really…

It just, it took that to realize that the, you know, everything crumbling going back down to the beginning is like, you have to have yourself talk to understand where you want to be. And almost, like I said, kill your old you to move forward. You know, you, you can’t continuously mourn or romanticize about the path you have to move forward. You actually have to have a very short memory on things.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:41)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Ridgeway (1:03:00)
You take from the past what you need to take from it, but you can’t relive it all the time. Cause if you do, you’re just going to be in the same place. And so that has really helped me be my North star of understanding of what I want out of it. And one of the things that pomegranate is they really understand that like, I’m not, I’m working hard and I work hard, but they respect family life. expect they, why I’m in New Orleans is because everything about New Orleans on paper,

is a disaster, everything. But once you’re in and live in New Orleans, it gets in your soul, you just don’t understand why, you can’t even explain it. And, the one thing is, is that it is the, it is where I feel like coming home to all the time. And so does my wife and so does my daughter. I’m raising her in Orleans Parish and she gets to go to a school where, you know, when the first day of school, there’s a second line in the full,

There’s a 16 piece brass band welcoming them to school. I mean, it just doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. We go down to the quarter and we get to see Jazz play. Now she’s too young to go into one the bars, but we stand outside and she listens to Jazz and the bartenders see her. They’ll give her like a Shirley Temple, they’ll walk out of Shirley Temple because they know the little girl in the quarter is going to come down and listen to Jazz. She’s seven years old.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:03)
That’s awesome.

Matthew Ridgeway (1:04:27)
and she’s got a 30 year old old soul. And that to me is like very extremely important. And, you know, having a great relationship with my wife, it’s only made me really kind of understand that you can have both, but you have to kind of have that talk with not only your wife or your significant other, but you have to understand that there is that compromise and there’s compromise all along. It’s not a one way street. And that’s really what

you know, to me is like probably was one of the hardest things to learn. And it took, you know, everything imploding for me to, you know, I’m pretty hard headed when it comes to those things. So, you know, I really take a step back now ⁓ and, and look and say, okay, what is, you know, what are the core values that I want to keep and retain for me and my family? But also is like, do I want to work for this company? Do I want to, you know,

do I wanna be a journeyman and kind of work through those things? Because it is a two-way street, my two-way street for Pomegranate is like, they allow me to, not only I’m telling a long story, it’s not about me, it’s about the group and about the team, but I’m also keep that, like, I think it’s important to keep that kind of like entrepreneurship type feeling about you because you’re always kind of pushing to the next level. You’re always kind of trying to…

moved to the next level. It’s not being selfish. It’s kind of taking your knowledge and giving it to people freely without any thought of what’s in it for you. And that’s really to me, it’s like what kind of that time in my life showed me. And it took me a long time to kind of really wrap my brain around that. the kind of a, I always said my mantra was like, I was great at work, shit at life. And like, it’s not really the best mantra to have.

Because

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:25)
By finding balance, you found an additive effect from these other elements in life. Now, Ridgway from Promethranite Hospitality, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Matthew Ridgeway (1:06:29)
100%, 100%.

Thank

you very much, I appreciate your time too.

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:44)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.